TUSCALOOSA | Mayor Walt Maddox’s recommendation for spending $48 million in federal grant money includes infrastructure upgrades, housing programs and improvements for businesses and libraries.His recommendation also sets aside money funds for cleaning up neighborhood lakes along with helping the Salvation Army near Rosedale and Fire Station No. 4 in Alberta rebuild.Maddox presented his recommendations to the City Council on Tuesday night. The council will review the list, and the council’s Public Projects Committee will discuss and vote to approve, amend or reject them on April 30.Should this project list or an amended version be approved by the committee, it will go before the full City Council for a vote by May 7.The money is from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which awarded Tuscaloosa $43.9 million in March and another $4.1 million earlier this month, and is earmarked for storm recovery projects and initiatives.Once a project plan is approved by the City Council, it will then be submitted to HUD for an up to 45-day review period because the funding comes from the same HUD program — the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery Program — that provided $16.6 million to the city in December 2011.The difference, however, is that City Hall has two years to spend the $43.9 million award.“If we don’t meet (the deadline), we lose the funding,” Maddox said in a presentation to The Tuscaloosa News before Tuesday night’s meeting.The two-year window begins after HUD issues final approval of the mayor’s project list. This is what HUD refers to as an “action plan.”To meet that deadline, some projects proposed under the action plan for the $16.6 million award have been shifted to this new round of projects.Consequently, projects that could take longer than two years — extensive road, water and sewer work, for example — have been moved to the slate that lacks the two-year deadline. “You’re going to see a lot of projects fast-tracked,” said Robin Edgeworth, director of the city’s Recovery Operations office.Additionally, many of the programs and projects require a component of community input before construction or implementation can begin. Monday night’s city-hosted public meeting at Forest Lake United Methodist Church to gather community feedback on a portion of the City Walk is part of that process.But qualifying as a part of this public input requirement is the community-based process that led to the Tuscaloosa Forward Generational Master Plan, and many of the proposed projects on Maddox’s list come from that document.However, the city will not immediately receive money from HUD once the project list is approved by the federal agency. Instead, the city will front the costs for any project or program and submit routine invoices to HUD for reimbursement.The mayor said that the city’s track record with HUD for being good stewards of these dollars is one reason Tuscaloosa was awarded a second round of storm recovery funding this year.“Our staff, they understood early on what it would take to get federal funds,” Maddox said. “I think we’re seeing the benefits of that in this recommendation today.”